


It Isn't the Kindness that Keeps You

by FelicityGS



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Bodyguard AU, Drugs, Gen, Human AU, codependent bffs, except loki is prob allergic to chocolate woops, not a good sort of poly if it is no one communicates ever, platonic lifemates, sex drugs and cocopuffs, vaguely poly?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 16:41:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2857691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FelicityGS/pseuds/FelicityGS
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thor gets a job offer after he throws Loki out of a meeting. </p>
<p>Naturally he says yes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Isn't the Kindness that Keeps You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Verbyna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verbyna/gifts).



> 2nd day of yule fics~ WOOP HOPE YOU'RE HAVING FUN
> 
>  
> 
> STORY NOTES: Bodyguard Thor gives me life. Science genius Jane is a gift. 
> 
> Cranky, allergic to the world Loki may always be my favourite trope. 
> 
> this too is bittersweet for some reason. 
> 
> PERSON NOTES:  
> This one is for Verbyna. Yo. Can you believe it's only been a year and change? Can you believe that it's already been a year and change? 
> 
> Either way, I'm happy I finally did something with that idea we tossed back and forth when I visited, and even happier that we met at all. Best gift of 2014? I don't know, it was a good year for me, but it's definitely in the top 2. 
> 
> Here's to many more <3

You threw him out of a meeting before he mauled your client.

As far as ways to meet someone, you've had worse. As a way to get a new contract...

Well, it's a first and a last, because there isn't a contract for _you_ after Loki.

He calls you on Saturday just as you finish your shift. He offers you double what you're getting paid, health insurance, to deal with your upcoming green card expiration, anything that you want so long as you'll be _his_.

You aren't sure why you agree, but it doesn't matter anymore because what matters is you agreed at all.

***

You check your watch--it's been an hour. You set your coffee down, your tablet, then stand and go into Loki's workshop. Loki is laying across the workbench, drool leaking out of his mouth. Even in sleep, there are dark bags under his eyes.

You pick him up and put him on the cot in the lab, tuck him in like you weren't the one who drugged his coffee to make him sleep. You get an IV set up and attached, check his breathing. You check your watch one last time.

He hasn't slept in the seventy hours before; he'll be awake again in five.

***

He's allergic to bee stings, capsicum, and nuts. Steam makes his asthma act up, but almost anything air-born does that (you're nose is more sensitive than it should be to these things). Pollen makes his eyes red and watery, his nose run, and his chest rattle worryingly. He's slightly anemic, never carries an epipen despite how he's allergic to the world, and tends to give himself asthma attacks by accident when he gets worked up.

You learned all of this by surprise.

***

You think about leaving nearly every day, even check the classifieds every morning as you drink your coffee.

***

He was an investor when you started your security company. He immediately switches his contract to your company, which helps earn you more clients because he has a not-undeserved reputation. Despite the fact you could, as president of the company, pass his contract to someone else, you don't. You don't trust anyone else to do it right, and you tell yourself his too important to lose.

He doesn't trust anyone else either. You test new recruits on him, give them your standard kit: epipen, inhaler, cash, gun. He plays along and makes their life hell, but the relief in his eyes when you take over again is unmistakable.

You pretend not to notice.

***

You meet Tony Stark.

The charm is somewhat lost when you have to keep them from tearing each other's throats out, when you find yourself restraining yourself because you want to punch Stark in the face for upsetting Loki in the first place.

You look at Happy across the room. He's been Stark's body guard for nearly two decades, and you see a little of your future laid out in front of you. It's ice in your gut, down your spine, nearly roots you to the spot.

You'll get out.

You will.

***

You nearly do.

Loki finds out about Jane Foster, your girlfriend, a brilliant woman, a genius in her own right.

Loki finds out, because no one else would have the reach or care enough to want to destroy her reputation or her research. You know. You _know_.

"Fix it," you tell him before you walk out.

(You walk because otherwise you will kill him. You know this as surely as you know that your name is Thor, that your mother raises orchids, that you know every single way you could kill Loki and it would look like the world was at fault. You will kill him for this if you don't leave.)

***

He doesn't apologize, but he starts to fix things. Jane laughs over the phone about it to you. Her smile is tight when you look at the conference photos. She was made to break barriers, not be the center of a media circus. You can't wait for this to die down so she can go back to her research.

Neither of you comment on the grants she's getting that she would never have had a shot at before.

(Jane tells you that Loki came to one of her talks. She tells you she punched him, and he laughed. She tells you she's a little worried about him, but he's still an asshole. You grunt and let the subject change. He's not your problem anymore.)

***

Sif takes over his contract--you don't trust anyone else to manage.

She calls you two weeks later at four in the morning. She's offering to quit, she can barely breathe, and it takes you five minutes to find out it's because she slapped Loki and surely you'll lose the contract now.

You laugh for the first time in as many weeks, long and hysteric.

(In the future, Sif and Hogun will do double duty when you need the night off and Loki has a public appearance. You don't know that yet. You walked. You got out.)

***

Nearly.

You nearly got out.

(The third person after Sif doesn't have an epipen. Loki ends up in the hospital and you--

He will die if you leave, you know that now, you have all the proof you ever needed that you are what stands between him and an accidental end. He's a bomb that trusts you to defuse him, forgotten how to keep an eye on himself, and you never know what's left on the clock.)

***

After that, you go back. You look for the moment where things _changed_ for you, where this went from just a job to a life you can't escape.

It's not the gifts--nice as they are. Like the painting that hangs outside his lab, where you sit when he's working, that he managed to outbid Stark for, one that you couldn't take your eyes off at the auction. You spend a lot of time looking at it. Thoughtful, because he knows you hover outside his workshop when you're home. All his gifts are like that, but they aren't why you can't let yourself leave.

It's not who you get to meet, because Stark is as much a nervous asshole as Loki and you've been working with celebrity culture for years before you met Loki. Hell, you're social life is less than it was, Skype calls with your mother and the rest with your employees who manage the other contracts your security firm pulls in.

It's not money, not his personality, not the discoveries he manages or his new designs. It's not his history that you barely know except for how he's clawed his way up from nothing.

It's...

***

He brings home strangers to fuck. You tune out the messy sounds except for the telltale stutter of his breath when he has an asthma attack. You read aviation magazines and wish you could smoke from the sounds of the sex he's having, know you can't because you can't do anything that might make it hard for him to breathe except _be_.

It's this. The way he comes out as soon as the sex is done, still reeking of sweat and come and lube, settles on your lap with a blanket around his waist and leans against you. It's in how you wrap an arm around him and you just sit, together, and _are_ in a way that no one else ever sees.

Loki, at rest.

***

(You stay because there's no where else you'd rather be.)


End file.
